She’d gotten good at fortifying a space quickly, but it took constant vigilance, keeping the rice bag full, and coffee enough for the morning.
In a world of a million voices reeling at the same time for space, for the slightest increase of volume, these women wake us up with their whispering determination.
I do love driving Mama in it
now along the coast highway, cranking the windows, folding the top down so the stiff fishy
breeze stings our noses and make our curls fly off the backs of our necks.
Everything stands isolated before my senses,
which accept it calmly: a rustling of silence.
There’s nothing in this darkness I couldn’t know,
the way I know my blood is running through my veins.
It may be time for some of us to rethink where we shop.
I don’t want to read another book
or listen to another podcast promising
a better life, the road to happiness.
I just want to love my life as it is
Congress has spent decades nullifying even a whiff of comprehensive immigration reform while simultaneously encouraging American businesses to both hire and demonize the cheap labor.
Coins begin to rain into his cigar box,
a few folded bills. Small children seek the deep source
of the sound. An old man with waist-length dreadlocks
puts down his heavy pack and sighs.
Americans can learn from the anti-Nazi leaflet “10 Commandments for Danes” by denying ICE everything it needs to function.
Economy and naturalness,
as in ballet, or basketball’s dunk,
or skater’s twirl, leap and glide.
Body’s flow seems effortless.
There were no legal protections against the rape of enslaved Black women or enslaved Black men.
That was Sunday. The village. I was a baby sugared
with indulgence. Fat and black-haired. Those years
of his unfolding wallet and the ongoing thorn
of origin.
I see how my whole life has been a dream,
one she built for me from the ground up,
her daughter, my mother the axe, beautiful
tool with which she shaped me, a house
much like the one she lived in, but smaller
A punishment for the arrogance of thinking my mission in life was to explain things to people.